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COME TWILIGHT by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

COME TWILIGHT

A Novel of Saint-Germain

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Pub Date: Oct. 1st, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-87330-1
Publisher: Tor

Another episode in the career of Yarbro's saintly vampire, the Count Saint-Germain (Communion Blood, 1999, etc.). Now, in 622, the Count—in this era known as Ragoczy Sanct’ Germain, and already three and a half thousand years undead—must flee his home in northeast Spain for the usual religious-political reasons, this time complicated by an outbreak of Great Pox. With his loyal, undead servant Rogerian, the Count takes refuge against the winter in the abandoned mountain village of Mont Calcius. The people there have fled the pox, abandoning a young, pregnant woman, Csimenae, to starve. The Count takes pity on her, helping her give birth to a son. Later, headstrong Csimenae is mortally injured during a boar hunt, and the Count makes her a vampire. But Csimenae's stubborn refusal to acknowledge or abide by the Count's wisdom will cause repercussions for centuries, in the 8th during and after the Moorish conquest, and in the 12th during the Spanish reconquest.

Yarbro makes good use of historical detail, even though few readers will spare much sympathy for the willful, vengeful heroine.